Reflection on Brian Crosby's Keynote: The Why's and Wherefores

We just started our April vacation today and I'm using my vacation time as a chance to catch up on my work for the K12 Online Conference graduate course. I was worried that I needed a chance to get some time off to recharge the batteries for the end of the year. After watching Brian Crosby's Obstacles to Opportunities keynote I feel like I could change the world! This presentation was tremendously inspiring to watch and think about how teachers can remove the obstacles they put in the way of integrating technology into their classrooms. I particularly loved how he made it clear that it isn't an "add-on". I just wish I wasn't here all by myself today so I could have shared this with other people in my building right now.

I use all of the tools that Brian mentioned in my course and with the teachers I work with in professional development sessions. I often refer to my job as being much like a sales position. A good salesman finds the objections a client has and does his best to remove those objections. As a technology integrator and professor I find myself doing the same thing with technology use in schools. Finding the hook that will capture someone into seeing the benefits of technology use in their classroom is what I seek at all times. Removing objections is my job!

I find students enjoy using digital video in their presentations. They learn so much and to quote one of Tim Tyson's former students (from a Karen Janowski tweet as I was writing this post), "Making movies is like learning, on steroids". This is especially true when students create these projects for authentic audiences. Posting your student work to the web through a school website, podcast, or YouTube gets their work out where it can be viewed and commented on by thousands of people. If we get out of the way of our kids learning, they will do tremendous work.

Image Citation:
Captured from Brian Crosby's K12 Online Conference Presentation - The Why's and Wherefores

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